


To Protect And To Love

by YesBothWays



Series: I Am So Okay With It:  Supercorp Stories [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9565250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: Another Kara coming out to Lena as Supergirl story.  This time a little more angsty and incendiary with more weight given to their fraught personal histories and deep vulnerabilities.  (I decided to post this as complete before writing more, so I could give this part a T rating.)





	1. For The First Time, Kara Slips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartshapedcandy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcandy/gifts).



> Your beautiful story "there's a moon in the sky (she calls me)" inspired me to write a new Supercorp story. So thank you for both!

            Kara could not help but pace as she waited for Lena to come to her apartment. She stopped when she heard Lena’s car on the street. Her driver’s voice was saying where he would be, and Lena got out with a warm and casual thank you. Next would come the sound of her boots walking up the stairs. Kara always became excruciatingly nervous when she meant to tell someone that she was Supergirl. All those years growing up, she had never told anyone about her secret heritage. The deep and protective fear of her entire family, both her parents and her sister, still resonated inside her own body and would amplify her own sense of fear. Her parents were never strict, except on this one thing: On this, they were constantly vigilant. She always found it difficult now to shed that old discipline. It was so deeply ingrained.

            Secrecy was the price of her sense of belonging in this world. She never thought it too much to pay, and instead, she took solace in being able to share her full truth with a loving family. Now, she felt closer to people outside of her family than ever before in her life. She had learned that she could actually draw people closer to her and gain their solidarity by sharing her full truth with them, rather than estranging herself from them and putting herself and her family in harm’s way. Only this time, she did not feel confident that this would turn out nearly so well as it had before. The situation felt too loaded. She had gotten carried away and messed things up.

            The two of them had been spending so much time together. Lena preferred to have Kara’s company at least some small part of the night at all of her company’s big events, and they had been rolling out at an increasing pace these past months and bringing them more often together. Kara could not fully understand why Lena felt inviting Kara was so central to her planning, at first. She thought maybe it was Lena’s indirect way of supporting her by offering Kara the jump as a reporter on private events and unannounced news across the city. One day, Lena caught onto this assumption. She scoffed and explained.

            “You’d be amazed at how quickly people will compartmentalize even their deepest held prejudices when confronted with the possibility of making money through doing so. But if anything ever happens that’s real and not in their financial interest, I give you my word, you’d be the only person in this room standing by my side. Unless, of course, Supergirl showed up to save the day and side with whomever she found standing alone. I’ve been surrounded by a buzzing hive of false love and Machiavellian connections my entire life Kara. In the end, you learn not to trust hornets; they have rather unpleasant instincts when anything rattles them. Just seeing you moving about the room being so genuine and consistent as you are makes me feel steadied and far less jaded.”

            “I’m always just working angles, trying to get some news,” Kara said self-conscious, her thoughts troubling over her own duplicity with Lena.

            “A bee floating about, yes,” Lena said with a smile. “I like seeing it, honestly. Don’t feel pressured to come. Just don’t think that you aren’t here for me, as well. Believe me when I say you are.”

            Kara could never get enough to eat during these events. The floating trays made her eager and forlorn. Those tiny snacks were like cruelly withheld treats dancing before a dog. She could never find enough breaks to snag enough to make a meal, and her metabolism ran so wild on this planet, she often found her hands shaky and her temper made skittish with hunger by the end of a long night. Lena caught onto this pattern, and she began to drag Kara away afterwards to these strange, expensive restaurants that were open late.

            Maybe that was Kara’s downfall: She let Lena see how much she could actually eat. That made her seem like a member of Kara’s inner circle, someone who knew her secret. Lena was absolutely astonished but took Kara’s bizarrely intense appetite in stride. She seemed to love this about her actually. Lena practically dared their overly skilled and attentive waiters to try to outdo Kara during the course of a meal. They never quite succeeded. The two of them were out so many long, late nights. Lena never seemed to mind whenever a call interrupted them and Kara had to dash off into the night. So the pattern remained, undisrupted, and only a handful of days ago, a late night that was practically already turned to a morning had found them slowly drinking borgias on a balcony after a long and excellent meal.

            Lena was laughing hard at something Kara had said, and she had let her body shift over to bump into Kara’s. Her arm and hip settled against Kara’s, and Kara easily pressed back to steady the two of them. Kara turned to look at Lena’s expression over her shoulder, and something wordless passed between the two of them. Kara remembered looking at the precise curve of the laugh lines that showed only this close at the corners of the Lena’s eyes, and then looking at the shape of her mouth. She was already imagining the texture of Lena’s lips slipping across her own with a sensation that would feel audible even if she did not listen close enough to hear the soft sound. Lena shifted to come a little nearer, and the back of her hand touched Kara's. Kara leaned in a bit more. Their eyes met. When Lena shifted with a tentative nudge to bring her mouth the tiniest bit closer to Kara’s, just a suggestion, Kara got the hint and leaned over in one fluid motion to meet the offered kiss.

            They were silent for a long, still moment, and all of Kara’s thoughts went quiet at the gentle way their lips met and how intensely the soft, almost quiet feel of their mouths touching contrasted with the dancing energy the same touch sent down her own spine to move through both her legs. A wordless thought about she was doing emerged in Kara’s mind, and she startled like she had been shocked a sudden jolt of electricity.

            “Oh, my gosh, Lena. I am so sorry. I…” Kara began to stammer.

            Lena had been almost smiling. She grew startled herself at Kara’s response. Her mouth made an intentionally casual yet stressed strain.

            “Sorry?” Lena said. “Oh, my. That is not where I thought this was going”

            Lena laughed in a tiny, strained sound and stepped back away from Kara and the rail. Her hands were held out in front of her in uncharacteristic, exaggerated gestures as she spoke. She was trying to lighten the mood. Kara felt a burn of immense guilt moving up her body, the transformation of the potent energy the kiss they had shared had sent through her. Her eyes burned and wanted to well up with tears. She had grown speechless with a shame that erased the exhilaration she had felt a moment before in the present, erased her age, erased anything that might have steadied her in her response.

            “Look, if you’re straight, and… quite committed to that, I mean, I …” Lena began.

            “That was wrong,” Kara interrupted her, speaking in stilted and heated stammer, “Of me, I mean. Not of you – not at all. Lena… I mean I…”

            Kara watched Lena’s open expression and panicked at her own attempt to forms words she could use to explain. Everything that might come out would be lies, and the truth would be even more dangerous if it slipped. Her instincts sort of kicked in, and she stepped in to hug Lena. She felt Lena’s arms hug her back gently, Lena’s hands touching to her shoulder blades. Her own cheek burned hot against Lena’s cool one, and Kara could not help but notice how utterly lovely Lena always smelled. This made her only blush harder, as she felt even more ashamed of herself for losing her focus and being so self-absorbed.

            “I... I love you. Honestly,” Kara said with almost a grimace of pain, as she grabbed her stuff from a chair nearby and began to do a full on panic-and-run. “This wasn’t right. I have to talk to you about this later.”

            “Okay,” Lena was saying. Then Lena was behind her, and Kara rushed through the thin balcony door, quickly catching herself and growing careful not to touch it without her focus and crack the reinforced glass. She crossed the restaurant as fast as she could without breaking out into a run or tapping into any of her hidden ability.

            Over the next day, Kara felt so ashamed that she did not tell anyone else what had happened. She found herself stalled over Lena’s infrequent texts that were gently inquiring. At least Lena did not apologize to Kara or come to any conclusions yet. Alex sensed the change in Kara immediately when they met the DEO. Kara knew it was really bad when Alex waited to ask her about it. That meant Alex was scared and trying to conjure her very softest paws to convince Kara to talk about what happened. Whenever Alex knew something had really gotten to Kara and felt genuinely worried over Kara’s sense of self, she grew soft and hesitant like this. Alex finally sat on Kara’s couch and asked her what was up.

            So Kara stammered her way through an explanation. She was glad when she did not cry over sharing the story with Alex, even though her face burned with shame. Kara could not remember having ever seen Alex so purely surprised. She had no impression that Kara and Lena were heading towards kissing. And the fact that Kara slipped the way she did absolutely astonished Alex. Her mistake was simply uncanny. Alex did not have much to say right away, but she dragged Kara into a full on cuddle. She stayed burrowed in close to Kara for most of the night, almost as if Kara had a broken heart.

            So the next day, Kara was able to text Lena. She tried to say only honest things. She asked if they could talk in person in a couple of days, and Lena said that would be fine and not to rush. Lena was nice, and Kara felt bad about this, too. She had to talk through what she should do with Alex. Kara had come to the conclusion that she absolutely had to tell Lena that she was Supergirl the next time they saw each other, and she was not willing to wait very long. Alex clearly expected this, but she also did not like it. She sat quiet for a long time.

            “Maybe you should let me tell her,” Alex said, surprising Kara.

            “What? Why?” Kara said. “How could that possibly be best for her?”

            “I don’t really care,” Alex said, “If she does anything to hurt you, I might have to kill her.”

            “Come on, Alex. Help me figure this out,” Kara implored.

            “I’m not like you, Kara. You’re so generous with people. I can’t let go of the past, her family,” Alex said.

            “Are you telling me not to do this?” Kara asked.

            “No,” Alex said at once, “No, Kara. I’m not… I would never try to tell you what to do. And when it comes to your love life, you are your own woman even more than in any other area of life. Just I don’t… don’t feel like you owe this to her.”

            “Alex, I do. Clearly, I do. We kissed! I should never have kissed her like that, without her knowing. It was wrong of me,” Kara said.

            “I doubt you’d see it that way if this were happening the other way around,” Alex said.

            “How could I possibly know what I would feel?” Kara said.

            “I know,” Alex said. “I know. This is _the furthest_ thing from your experience. Still, I just, please don’t let her do anything to you, okay?”

            “What’s she going to do?” Kara asked, and even she heard that her own voice came out unconvincingly.

            “You haven’t let yourself even think about that have you,” Alex said. “You’re too caught up in what she’s been feeling.”

            Kara gave Alex a look that said both that Alex was right and that Kara did not want to admit it. They shared a silence, glancing away from one another before looking back. Alex reached for Kara’s hand.

            “Do this for yourself, Kara, please, if you are set on doing this. You’ve always been so brave; I know I won’t be able to stop you long. There are always risks to the way we choose to spend our lives, fighting for what we believe is right, putting our lives on the line, moving past those unavoidable mistakes we make. I’m completely with you on this, whatever you decide. But make sure this is for you.

            “Kara, you know that she knows you. She knows your life, all of it, all of us. She could make all of our lives very dangerous. She has serious power, not the kind you can set aside. And what’s more, she’s in a position to really hurt you, and I don’t mean in terms of her relationship to the city: I mean inside of you. I don’t want to have to see that happen. I’ve never seen you like this over anyone, never seen you _like_ anyone like this, so much you’d slip this way. So just, tell me that you’ll keep yourself as safe as you can as you go on with what you’re planning to do, okay?”

            “I will, I… I promise,” Kara said after a long pause and rubbed at Alex’s knee.

            Alex gave Kara a sidelong look that clearly meant, _Maybe you will_. She did not say anything out loud. She just reached over to hold and rub Kara’s shoulder.

            Kara stood in her apartment trying to gather a dual resolve now to both keep steady and tell Lena the truth and also to safeguard herself, which she needed to do for Alex even if she found she could not do it for herself. Kara did not quite know what she expected to happen today. Nothing specific came to her mind when she thought about it. But somehow, as Lena approached her door to rap very lightly with her knuckles, Kara crossed the room to let her inside and felt entirely certain that Lena was not going to take any of this lightly at all.


	2. For The First Time, Lena Sees Who Kara Is

            Lena took a deep breath to steady her nerves, as she waited for Kara to open her door. She tried to gather together what all she knew she wanted to say to Kara in her mind. She had been forced to let what had happened between them play over and over in her mind on repeat for the days they had spent apart. She knew better than to try to shove something so important to her aside. She focused as much on the potent, almost unearthly comfort she had felt with Kara’s mouth on her own, the way Kara’s eyes had been open and soft before she leaned in to kiss Lena, and on the way Kara had said, “I love you,” so genuinely before she rushed off as she had on the start that cut through Kara’s body and her look of panic and shame as she fled. Lena was not entirely certain what had happened, and she intentionally left room for Kara to say whatever it was that she wanted to say. But she had come up with a couple of things that she definitely wanted to say to Kara when they saw one another.

            Lena lost her breath, as Kara opened the door. Both of them remained hushed, as Lena slipped inside, and Kara closed the door. They shared a smile, and Kara took Lena’s coat and bag with one of those familiar courtesies, those light-hearted, chivalrous gestures that Kara would often make. She hung the coat on the back of a chair and placed the bag on the table in front of it. Lena felt relieved that Kara could make eye contact with her freely, at least. She realized that she had expected Kara to feel withdrawn, the connection between them lost in whatever dissonance had erupted when she had foolishly initiated that kiss between them.

            As she stepped fully into Kara’s apartment, Lena realized that Kara seemed nervous and grave compared with her usual self. She thought that she seemed almost sad. Lena kept her physical distance from Kara and talked with her hands, as she spoke.

            “First, just let me say that I promise never to kiss you again without getting your express permission fist,” Lena said. “I wasn’t trying to force anything to happen between us. I completely misread you in the moment, and I misunderstood, and, well, whatever happened will not happen a second time, I can promise.”

            Kara’s eyes softened as she considered the way Lena was handling this. She smiled a little. Still, she looked sad. She bit her lip then in some kind of distress.

            “What happened was not your fault in any way. I mean I… I kissed you, remember?” Kara said with her eyes on Lena’s again. “And I am really, really sorry, Lena. I shouldn’t have done that. Let me explain.”

            Lena was already listening intently, studying Kara closely. Kara seemed unconvinced and looked hard at Lena for a minute. Kara took a deep breath and started to speak with a rehearsed focus and her eyes no longer on Lena’s face.

            “This is going to come as a shock,” Kara started.  

            Lena’s eyebrow spiked with her increasing confusion. Whatever Kara was about to say, it could not possibly be that she was straight, since living in a heteronormative, patriarchal society never allowed any woman declaring herself entirely straight to come as any form of a shock. Lena’s mind flashed over a handful of intuitions, trying to anticipate and prepare for whatever she was about to hear. She thought perhaps Kara was with someone else, which would have been a surprised certainly and a little disappointing but not cause for this much tension. She thought perhaps Kara was trans and about to tell her, but that would have been fine and did not seem like it would have been framed this way. She felt sure that Kara assumed Lena’s vulnerability took precedence here surrounding whatever she was about to share and not her own. Cheating fit better, but that was not it, she felt sure.

            As Kara began to speak, she took off her glasses and put them on her kitchen table. Her eyes focused clearly on Lena’s face, which with her glasses just taken off felt uncanny to Lena and gave her a quiet, unseen start. Then Kara unbuttoned her shirt.

            “I wasn’t born on earth. My family here adopted me and raised me as a human. I was Kara Zor-El before Kara Danvers. Now that I’m grown, I have started to live a double life. I have to keep my two lives separate to keep the people that I love safe. I get to live openly in a way under the emblem of my family name,” Kara said.

            As Kara finished, she looked up to meet Lena’s eyes. Her shirt was pulled opened to reveal the emblem underneath. Lena stood perfectly still for a long, poised moment, except her eyes. They moved from the emblem to Kara’s face several times as her mind fully comprehended that Kara Danvers was Supergirl.

            Lena waited in the absolute quiet that had come into her inner world for some shift. Her response slid from some place so deep in the back of her mind that she could not distinguish the origins. She found herself moving across the room in a kind of daze. She snatched her bag and coat into her hands and rushed across the room.

            “Lena, wait. Don’t,” Kara said, startled into speaking at the sheer intensity of Lena’s reaction. “Don’t go.”

            Kara made the mistake of walking partway across the room towards Lena. Lena felt more than saw Kara move in closer. As she reached the door, stalled by having to open it before she could rush out, Lena turned, sharp as a wild animal. Kara stopped abruptly, eyes moving over Lena, taking in her state. Lena’s whole body was held tense, ready for a fight.

            “You going to stop me?” Lena said with a sharp lift of her chin, then her eyes burned into Kara.

Her voice was all changed and came out nearly as a growl, a distinct challenge meant to keep Kara off her. At the sound of the almost primal level of outrage and aggression in Lena’s voice, Kara must have recognized how deep the threat of her presence in the room suddenly felt to Lena. In response to this, Kara’s expression became surprised and softened at first. She shook her head as her expression then became pained and overwhelmed. Kara’s brows furrowed, as she grew quite serious.

            “No.,” Kara said, her face almost a grimace now. “Lena, I would never do anything like that. I…”

            Kara grew too overwhelmed to speak anymore. She looked down. She had brought her hand to her face to touch her brows. She finally looked up, still speechless, surprised to find Lena watching her closely, her hand still on the doorknob.

            Lena turned to the door, away from Kara. Her mind felt pulled in multiple directions, her perceptions a set of dissonant fragments that could never be made to fit together. She breathed a moment, unseeing. Memories of how she felt those many times, as she struggled with one undeniable insight after another to realize the truth about her adopted parents’ and brother’s love for her, which she so desperately needed to believe in when she was young and nothing without them, that it was all a game, all about power, and would shatter if she were herself, flashed out vividly inside her mind. She had learned with her last girlfriend, Jamie, to recognize how quickly her own sense of trust could snap at any false sign of duplicity. Now, this one was real and quite overpowering. Still, Kara felt like the same person to her that she was before, standing in this room now. And the way Supergirl felt, all that power, never had put Lena on edge.   This was not a power play. This was perhaps the very opposite of that.

            “I’m getting this all wrong,” Lena said aloud, still locked in her inner struggle.

            She turned back to see Kara still waiting patiently. Kara’s breathing came heavy, and she was clearly trying her best not to cry. Her eyebrows lifted, imploringly.

            “Stay and talk with me,” Kara said slowly, no edge of any force or threat in her voice.

            Lena let the sound of Kara’s voice echo in her mind and carry full resonance. She realized that she could walk out, or she could turn around and stay. Kara was not interested in stopping her and meant to let her decide. The sheer fact that Kara could very easily stop her rattled Lena once more. Her jaw gripped defensively. She leaned up and eyed Kara quite hard. Kara’s expression became only softer and more desperate at this. Lena look down and took a deep breath. She nearly shook her head, as she tried to clear her thoughts of the impression of the war she believed herself to be embroiled in once more, the atmosphere created by the relationships of what still amounted in years to most of Lena’s life. A clear sense of the atmosphere in this room at the present moment washed against her. The contrast between Kara’s apartment and the feel of all the houses ruled by the Luthor family brought a silent shock of awareness to settle on her.

            Maybe she still should take her own violence away from the scene, she realized. But she did not truly need to escape. After along moment, she decided to try and stay with Kara – to steady herself. She stepped away from the door, every instinct screaming for her to allow every cell in her body to spring into either fight or flight. She made herself go to the cabinets in the kitchen, moving closer to Kara and allowing her back to become turned to her, and a bristling energy ran up the top of her spine, as if she thought Kara were going to come up behind and grab her. The commonality of what she was focused on doing placed a tension on the sharp, overly vivid thoughts rattling her mind. She would not see her if she did, Lena realized, Kara could move so fast. Her jaw kept tensing in rage as her mind kept darting from place to place with the fury of her own panic.

            “You’ll have to give me a minute,” Lena said.

            Her hands stiffly took up the nearest bottle, heavy and almost full of bourbon. She got out a glass, conscious of not breaking it, almost alarmed with the vivid idea of the sound of the glass shattering and the flight of the shards. Her hands were shaking as she poured the drink, then she ran the faucet a minute and diluted it with some water. She shut off the water and stood with her eyes closed, drinking and thinking. Many years of learning the discipline allowed her to calm her own traumatized nerves. The memories that flooded her mind came harsh and bright like unexpected rays of sunlight that could make a person close their eye’s while driving even though was dangerous to do so. She turned a little to glance at Kara, who was sitting at her table.

            Kara’s shoulders were rounded forward, both hands squeezed between her knees, with her brows furrowed. Kara waited in patient silence, as Lena took another minute. Her face was soft and deeply unhappy. The sight took Lena off her guard some. Lena finished her drink and filled the glass with water.

            As Lena turned around to face Kara, Kara got more nervous and slid out of the chair. She backed up a little to give Lena some more space and stood with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Only the top button of her shirt was still undone. Her face seemed different even though it had always been the same beneath the lines and angles of her glasses. Now her face looked naked and simple. She still felt like Kara and not Supergirl. Lena shook her head in her confusion.

            “So which of you is the persona and which is real?” Lena asked.

            Kara seemed taken aback by that question. Whatever she had expected Lena to say, it was not that. She thought for a moment, growing serious. And she shook her head again.

            “Both are me,” Kara said. “Different sides, maybe, but all just… me.”

            Lena considered this for a moment, her brows furrowed in severity. She drank a bit of water to create a moment without saying anything rash. She had all of these angry things to say, but none of them would form into clear words.

            “Lena, I know you feel betrayed,” Kara said. “I would have told you sooner. I’m not the only with so much at stake in this. I needed to wait.”  

            “Until you knew all about me?” Lena said.

            “Until the people I care about most trusted you as much as I do,” Kara said.

            The word _trust_ made Lena tilt her head a bit. She felt her eyes harden and a bit of a sneer come to her lips. She felt for a moment… well, she felt like a Luthor. The idea made her swallow some more water, shake her head in disorientation, and hold back tears that formed in her eyes.

            “Do they, then?” Lena said.

            Kara looked down. Lena could hear the _no_ as clearly as if Kara had spoken the word herself. Kara was pressing at her brow again with her fingertips. She was crying and trying to stop herself, Lena could see. A sob she suppressed made her breath shake softly.

            “I’m sorry that we kissed before you knew. That was wrong of me,” Kara said.

            That response was what it finally took for Lena to be taken aback herself. Kara’s expression was so complex that Lena’s mind cleared to try and make room for everything she could see there. A defensive edge had come into Kara’s expression for the first time, and Lean realized it was not a defensive instinct that Kara felt towards her but for her, against her friends’ judgments. That made Lena almost uneasy. She did not know suddenly if she should be trusted entirely with this. And that leveling thought broke through the storm of frenzied distrust swirling in her mind.

            Lena’s thoughts moved over Kara’s last words. Here Kara was revealing that she was superhuman, and still Kara was reacting in such a familiar way. The black and white Kara saw, calling kissing Lena wrong, made Lena nearly laugh. The fact that she wanted to make this about consent, so simple, so interpersonal, made Lena take a deep breath and attempt to reconsider absolutely everything. She looked over Kara, as she stood before her now. Her face was pained, but she was a little stoic, trying not to dominate this conversation with her own feelings, Lena realized.

            Lena was still processing what she felt herself, which was drowned out by being triggered and therefore utterly terrified. As to Kara’s feelings, what were they? In Lena’s mind, so shaped by past experiences, she expected Kara to feel withdrawn, superior, elite. She could not imagine Kara telling her something this big all of a sudden, unless she felt that she had the upper hand entirely – unless she wanted something from Lena. A power play was what Lena had assumed in all of this. Only now, as she really considered Kara, that was certainly not what she saw happening. Kara’s distinctly strong and proud shoulders were sloped forward as if to protect her chest, and her hands were pulling at her own cuffs. Her face felt open, even though she was trying to contain her feelings, and the depths of genuine emotion held in her expression that always felt so generously shared seemed quite the same. There was something new there, something Lena had never seen before. She cocked her head in recognition.  

            “You’re scared,” Lena said aloud and softly in sudden realization.

            Kara’s eyebrows went up a little. She made a subdued, rapid a nod of her head that came along with a bit of a shrug. She looked down, still quite stoic and serious. A long silence passed between them. Lena felt herself go quiet inside. Kara took a slow, deep breath and begin to speak.

            “This isn’t about how I feel…” Kara started to say.

            Lena’s had body changed, the shift surfacing from within, and she came right up close to Kara. The movement stopped Kara mid-sentence. Lena reached a hand between them to see what might happen. Kara brought her hand to match Lena’s almost by instinct. The way that Kara worked her fingers into Lena’s, until their palms came together, held every ounce of Lena’s full attention. Her mind almost never focused on any single thing with the full vigor and force of her concentrated thoughts. The gesture the way Kara made it was slow and delicate, finding intimacy and matching them together without taking any possession or forcing Lena’s hand to simply come and match her own. Lena swallowed hard after she watched this. She never felt like she really knew anyone she did not touch, and she never really touched anyone except her lovers. Unless she counted family – unless she counted fights – and she never wanted those to count.

            Relief washed over Kara’s expression, subtle and deep as she looked at their joined hands. Lena nearly blanched as she thought now about what it was like to have one’s true identity revealed and to then know that one was suddenly being seen as a monster, something not someone, inhuman and dangerous. The irony that her mind had conjured such deep fear by inadvertently comparing Kara with a Luthor was not lost on Lena. The thought made her shut her eyes and tense her jaw slightly.

            As she opened her eyes to see their hands then Kara’s face, her mind struggled still to allow her concepts of both Kara and Supergirl, this rare and powerful alien being, to merge fully. Kara had said both were truly her. Lena took that seriously. Kara’s eyes came to Lena’s in a tentative, soft gaze. As they both looked to their two hands that were touching, Lena allowed herself to consider how truly easy it would be for Kara to crush all the frail, human bones in her hand, as easily as anyone else could crush a moth out of disregard or cruelty. The rational consideration of what it would take to hurt Kara’s hand that felt just as delicate and vulnerable in her own was even more perplexing, as Kara’s hand could pass under a truck tire quite unscathed. Lena’s felt sense of the depths of Kara’s vulnerability in this moment nearly made her stop breathing, and she concentrated on how real it felt even though it did not make sense to her.

            Lena had realized long ago that all of the members of her adopted family were aloof, detached from her in truth. There was nothing she could ever do to really hurt them. She spent some of her teenage years trying to match them, to pass as one of that same clan. Then she fell in love with a woman and felt herself shed the act like an overused, worn out coat she had been holding onto too long. Her family could sense the depths of the change in her immediately, and the disadvantage she was at made the following years an absolute hell for Lena. Her family had made her pay for being unlike to them in the subtlest and most profound ways.

            In her mind, Kara ought to feel far less vulnerable and the imbalance between them starker than anything Lena had ever felt with between herself and the rest of the Luthor family. Instead, Kara still held the same, vivid tenderness and openness Lena had known her to inhabit before. The imbalance of power between them ought to be immense. Lena’s thoughts shifted then and turned to considering their vulnerabilities. Her thoughts flickered at once over how much she knew about Kara’s life – her work, her home, her friends, her family. She held an advantage over Kara that could not be undone, unless Kara killed or threatened her into silence. And Lex had proven how far he could go to protect himself with the resources they had and also how a reluctance to go to his same extremes gave him an advantage against the Supers.

            The drastic difference in their physical vulnerabilities hardly made Kara invulnerable. Privilege and power were complex realities, as Lena knew from her own experience. Kara felt entirely human. In fact, she felt to Lena distinctly like a woman.   Kara was tied to a family and a life, and her sense of belonging, indeed her very ability to belong always felt tenuous and at risk. Nothing could be more plainly seen than how much Kara wanted to hold on to that sense of belonging she had gained, how much she wanted to be accepted and found desirable even. Lena could sever her from all of that. Kara could be revealed and legally marginalized. The nation state itself could be made to wage war on her, and even if she could overpower their military forces, everything she loved would shatter at the very start. Even so, Kara had brought Lena close, befriended her when she was alone in the city and in transition, brought her so close, right into the heart of her own life, so close that she lost herself and they kissed.

            Lena let go of Kara’s hand. She felt her hands shake a little as she reached up to take Kara’s face in both of her hands. Kara’s eyes softened and smiled at the corners, until she nearly cried. Lena leaned her forehead into Kara’s. She stood quiet for a moment and simply felt the nearness between, and Kara’s gentle hands on the backs of her own.

“I promise to be as careful and gentle with you,“ Lena managed to say, “As you have always been with me.”

            The thought of kissing Kara flickered across her mind. Lena got her arms around Kara instead. They embraced, and Kara’s arms around her neck felt not only gently but almost weak, exhausted perhaps. She felt Kara chest shake under her hands on her back in what came as both a sob and laugh at once, the sound of the most profound relief. Lena closed her eyes, feeling how all of her defenses were let down now, and simply held Kara close and tight.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to chat me up here or on Tumblr (same name)!


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